Terror Still The Rule In S. Africa

ZWIDE, SOUTH AFRICA — As a military helicopter circled overhead, two armored troop carriers lumbered along the muddy roads of this tin-shack community late last week.

``When they come like this, somebody always dies,`` said a woman in a group toting buckets of water from a community tap to homes that lack plumbing and electricity.

Since last Sunday, this black township with 140,000 residents has been under the state of emergency imposed on 36 districts throughout South Africa by the white regime in response to months of often-violent civil unrest.

But Zwide, like other black townships where antigovernment outbreaks are frequent, has been under tight police and military control since March, and people here say the state of emergency hasn`t changed their lives much.

``When you live in a black township, you live under a state of emergency all your life,`` maintained Dan Qeqe, a black businessman.

The first week of the state of emergency here was marked by the same sort of violence that has raged in black townships for months:

-- On Tuesday, according to Zwide residents, two students were killed by security police while conducting alternative classes for blacks who have been boycotting schools for a year.

-- The following day a policeman was wounded by gunfire, after which many black homes were searched for weapons. Some residents said they had been roughed by the searchers, who kicked their doors open in the middle of the night.

-- Residents who work at a hotel in downtown Port Elizabeth claimed that they had been tear-gassed as they walked to their homes here from a commuter bus. A fellow worker was beaten so severely that he has not returned to work, hotel employees said.

-- Residents report that some blacks have been taken into custody without explanation and that youths have been harassed and beaten with long whips called sjamboks.

According to residents, the shooting of the two students Tuesday came after about 350 young people gathered in the courtyard of Phakamisa Junior Secondary School and began making speeches and singing protest songs.

Shortly after 10 a.m., a white truck pulled up to the locked school gate and 10 Security Branch policemen emerged, according to witnesses.

``They demanded to be let in, and when they were told the keys had to be fetched from the students they became enraged and climbed over the fence,``

one resident said. ``They began to beat the teachers severely and told them that if they could not control the students, they should collect their jackets and leave.

``They then proceeded to the lavatory and halls where students had fled and began beating them. When some tried to run outside, the police started shooting.``

According to witnesses, 16-year-old Mtobeli Mancam was killed immediately by a gunshot to the head. Thozamile Manga, also 16, died on the way to a hospital. Several other students and two teachers reportedly also were shot.

``I still cannot believe this has happened,`` Mancam`s father, Edward, said Friday. ``When you take children to school, they are supposed to be very safe.``

According to government figures, 16 people have been killed in South Africa since the state of emergency took effect. The government has put the number of detained at more than 900. Those detained include priests, students, civic organization leaders, pharmacists, journalists and members of women`s groups, among others.

The national police headquarters said Friday that ``law-abiding citizens`` were ``cooperating very well`` with the forces deployed in the black townships under the state of emergency.

The police commissioner, Gen. Johan Coetzee, said police would no longer give details of incidents they considered isolated or negligible. He denied that information about black unrest would be withheld.

Still, it was apparent that police were releasing much less information than they did two weeks ago. Many reports on disorders failed even to say where they were.

Police said that on Friday they arrested 214 black students who were boycotting classes and intimidating other students in Oudtshoorn, about 200 miles west of Port Elizabeth and 200 miles east of Cape Town.

At Galvandale, near Cape Town, 300 people of mixed race stoned a school and police arrested 15, according to the police statement. At Guguletu, in the same area, police used tear gas to scatter a crowd burning private vehicles.

Elsewhere, about 6,000 students at the University of the Western Cape, a mixed-race institution near Cape Town, attended a rally to protest the state of emergency. Sporadic stone-throwing broke out after the gathering, witnesses said.